St. Finbar, Bay 20th Street, Bath Beach

In 2016, the rectory mailing address is 138 Bay 20th Street, Brooklyn NY 11214, telephone 718-236-3312.  The parish website is linked here.  

Above, St. Finbar's church on quiet Benson Avenue at Bay 20th Street. Each photo may be enlarged by clicking on it.

Above, the ornate interior of St. Finbar's church. I took the above photo and the one below in 2009. On 4.15.2016, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a news story headlined "Parishioners restore St. Finbar church to former glory."


Most churches have Christmas manger scenes, but this is the first I have seen with a Resurrection scene. The photo was taken ten days after Easter. Note the colorful Stations of the Cross.

On Bay 20th Street, this portrait of St. Finbar is to the left of the office door, through which one enters the church outside of Mass times.


In June, 2008, the parish closed its elementary school, pictured above on Bath Avenue, probably because of low enrollment. A green banner in the center of the photo reminds passersby of forty years of excellence in education, but I suspect that the parish offered elementary education even before 1968.  Addendum: In December. 2010, commented that there was only Sunday School or CCD before that date. Thanks for the comment, one of several that can be found by clicking the word "Comments" at the top of this post.
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St. Finbar's parish was established in 1880, and, judging from my visit and the parish bulletin, it stands out as a friendly and active parish serving a catholic, that is, universal, population. Finbar lived in the south of Ireland, became bishop of Cork, and died about 633.  I would deduce, therefore, that this parish was founded by Irish Catholics. Twenty or thirty years later, many Italians arrived in this residential neighborhood. The more recent numerous arrivals have been from East Asia and Latin America.
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The rectory mailing address is 138 Bay 20th Street, Brooklyn NY 11214, telephone 718-236-3312.
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When St. Finbar's parish was established in 1880, it was not in the city of Brooklyn but rather in the Town of New Utrecht. In 1894, Brooklyn annexed New Utrecht. To get from downtown Brooklyn, passengers rode horse cars down to 36th Street and Fifth Avenue, then rode a steam train of the Brooklyn, Bath, and Coney Island Railroad along New Utrecht Avenue. Later, Fifth Avenue elevated trains from Park Row used trolley poles as they operated on in the street, passengers using steps on the cars to board. In 1916, the present elevated station at 18th Avenue was opened, and West End subway service ran to Canal Street, Manhattan, and north on Broadway. The present D train service operates under Sixth Avenue, Manhattan. 
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St. Mary, Mother of Jesus, Bensonhurst

Above is the church of St. Mary Mother of Jesus on 85th Street, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The second parish church burned in 1967, and this church was built in 1971, after the sudden death of its architect, John J. O'Malley. The rectory mailing address is 2326 84th Street, Brooklyn NY 11214, telephone 718-372-4000. In 2015, I cannot find the parish website, with Mass schedule, informative history, photos, and much other information. The parish dates back to 1889.  Please also see the parish Facebook page, which appears to be more current.
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Above, looking south on 23rd Avenue at 84th Street, we see St. Peter Catholic Academy. 
The school address is 8401 23rd Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11214, telephone 718-372-0025. The school has two buildings, seen here extending a full city block.
This is the third name the school has been called.  From about 2006 to 2013, the name was The Catholic Academy of St. Mary, Mother of Jesus - St. Francis Cabrini, serving the parishes of St. Dominic, St. Finbar, St. Frances Cabrini, Most Precious Blood, and St. Mary, Mother of Jesus.  In 2008, St. Finbar's parish, a mile to the west, closed its school, and in 2009, the diocese ordered Most Precious Blood school, a mile to the southeast, to close.
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The Sisters of Saint Joseph staffed St. Mary, Mother of Jesus, parish school from its beginning in 1914.

Above, looking east at the corner of 23rd Avenue (to the left) and 85th Street (to the right). Padre Pio can be seen waiting at the traffic signal. The red sign announces a cooperative program with St. John's University.




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Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Sunset Park

The basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help faces Fifth Avenue at the corner of 60th Street, Brooklyn. The mailing address for the rectory is 526 59th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220. The website is HERE, with presentations in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese, as Sunset Park has once again become a community of immigrants. The street on the sunny side of the church is 60th Street. When the parish was established in 1893, this was the border (or City Line) of the City of Brooklyn. On July 1, 1894, Brooklyn annexed the Town of New Utrecht, that is, Bay Ridge, and several other neighborhoods to the south and east.

Both in the 1960's when I visited this church and again in February, 2009, the upstairs church was locked. My earlier visit found in the downstairs church a novena service with a relic. This year, Father John O'Connor was being waked.
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The New York Public Library digital collection provides the results of aerial photography of the entire city in 1924. This link shows the site of the Basilica at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 60th Street, just north of the tracks of the New York Connecting Railroad. However, I am puzzled whether the Basilica was complete then, as the photo does not seem to show the 2009 outline of the building.
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The parish elementary school, now called Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy of Brooklyn, is at 5902 Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11220, telephone 718-439-8067.  Its website is linked HERE.

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Sadly, in February, 2025, the school announced it would close at the end of June.  Link HERE.

Our Lady of Angels, Bay Ridge

Our Lady of Angels parish is located at 7320 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn NY 11209, telephone 718-836-7200. The parish website is linked here.
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The above photo shows the church on Fourth Avenue, between 73rd and 74th Streets. The parish was established in 1891, and its buildings occupy the west side of Fourth Avenue  between 73rd and 74th Streets, reaching along 74th Street almost to Third Avenue.
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In April, 1916, subway service under the west two lanes of this street began, making OLA another one of those New York churches that has the pleasant rumble of "toy trains in the basement."

This view on 74th Street looks towards Fourth Avenue. The parish school was reorganized in 2009 as Holy Angels Catholic Academy. Its address is 337 74th Street, Brooklyn NY 11209, telephone 718-238-5045.

This plaque is on the older building (below) now in partial service by a day-care center and a health clinic. Note the ornamentations along the top floor.



Above the main door of the church, the Latin inscription reads "Dedicated to Mary of the Angels." Click the photo for details. Thankfully, this church is not locked, and numerous worshipers visit.

St. Patrick, Bay Ridge

The rectory address is 9511 Fourth Ave., Brooklyn NY 11209, phone 718-238-2600. The parish website is linked here.
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St. Patrick's parish at 95th Street and 4th Avenue in Bay Ridge was probably the eighth Catholic parish founded in what is now the borough of Brooklyn. It may be the first Brooklyn parish named for Patrick, because the 1848 founding of St. Patrick's, Kent Avenue, was apparently under the title of St. Mary, changed later to St. Patrick. 

The cornerstone of the church carries the date 1925, the same year that the BMT subway reached 95th Street and probably led to a large increase in parish population. In the early 1960's, however, Robert Moses and his ramps for the Verrazano Bridge probably destroyed much housing within the parish boundaries, though my recollection is that the people of St. Ephrem parish suffered more.


The address of St. Patrick Catholic Academy at the right is 401 97th Street. The school website is HERE.
In 1945 the school had 1,140 students. In the 2016 Official Catholic Directory, the enrollment is 262. For decades, the Dominican Sisters of Amityville staffed the school.
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The Brooklyn Public Library posted a 1908 photo of the previous church (pre-1925) here.



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St. Francis Xavier, Sixth Ave., Park Slope

The rectory address is 225 Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11215, telephone 718-638-1880. For more information, please visit the parish website here. The parish of St. Augustine was established in 1870, and St. Francis Xavier parish in 1886. The two churches are only six blocks apart on beautiful Sixth Avenue. This photo shows the 1888 cornerstone of St. Francis Xavier church.
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The parish has an elementary school.  Its informative website is linked HERE.

The above invitation to a Lenten Mission faces Sixth Avenue in early March, 2010.
Please click the photo to enlarge it.
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Two sources list the architect as Thomas Houghton: Marrone's book and this one.  However, his date of death is given 1903 in one, 1913 in the other.




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St James Cathedral, Jay Street

In November of 2017, the Brooklyn Eagle (web version) published this article, which mentions interior renovations to St. James Cathedral.

The cathedral doors are often locked.  The above sign indicates that one may visit the church 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to Friday.  Clicking on any photo will enlarge it.
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Please click on the word Comments above the photo to read 15 important comments, including a request for a photo of the graduating class of 1965, St. James Pro-Cathedral elementary school.  

The mailing address of St. James Cathedral is 250 Cathedral Place, Brooklyn NY 11201, telephone 718-855-6390. The above photo shows the cathedral on Jay Street, just north of congested Tillary Street, in the few blocks between the approaches to Brooklyn Bridge and to Manhattan Bridge. The history of this parish goes back to 1822. See the cathedral website here. The see of Brooklyn was created in 1853. It seems that there was a fire in the cathedral in 1889 and that the current structure was built in 1903, according to the AIA Guide to New York City. The architect at that time was George H. Streeton, who also designed the church of the Guardian Angel on West 23rd Street, Manhattan, in 1910, only to have that church destroyed about 1930 for the construction of the New York Central Railroad's freight elevated line, likewise short-lived. Streeton also designed St. Raphael's church at 502 West 41st Street, Manhattan, still standing.
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For about a century, this church was known as the Pro-Cathedral, in hopes that a larger cathedral would be built somewhere. The bus in the photo has as its destination 310 Prospect Park West and 19th Street, the location of some diocesan offices. After streetcar service ceased on this route about 1957, the diocese bought the carbarn at 20th Street and built Bishop Ford High School there.

Jay Street was narrower until about 1933. To construct an Independent Subway junction under Jay Street, the parish buildings on the west side of the street were cut back severely. The high school was moved to St. Augustine's parish and to the new Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, where the school newspaper is still called The Jamesonian. The parish elementary school closed in 1973. The above photo shows the building on the west side of Jay Street.  Over the north door, a sign says Cathedral Pavilion, but other signs indicate use by a charter school. About 1985 or 1990, we heard an address by Mario Cuomo here, followed by a question-and-answer period.



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